Pretentious?

Someone told me this blog seemed pretentious, or was it serious? Well in any case, this is one of the few people that I actually showed it to, so I should probably stop this right away, right? Who on earth wants to be percived as pretentious and serious?

That said, I won't stop (yes, impossible projects is my hallmark). This will never be the place to go if you want a daily update of some sort, if you do want that, watch the three minute news or read the bulletins the evening papers put out. This is in fact a serious page! No really, I'm serious. Things here might take a little more time, they may also be a bit harder to read than one row paragraphs, they will seem pretentious. It's the whole point. If I wanted to read light hearted stuff, the net is crammed with that already, there would be no need for this site.

I don't expect a lot of readers - they way the Internet works is largley based on daily updates that are read in under two minutes - but that doesen't really matter. I do this for myself, in fact I like to read my own stuff. Yes, that is correct. I am self righteous in addition to serious and pretentious!

So, whats the point of theese ramblings? The net is, to an alarming degree, not serious. I want more good content on the net. I try to put good stuff here instead of "often stuff". There is very little stuff for the sake of stuff here. The person that told me this seemed serious and pretentious actually have one of the most serious and pretentious sites I know of, and I like it a lot. Society, in some majority kind of meaning of the word, is very afraid of seriousness.

Yes, all of the above, but mostly the last point. Also, I hope the negotiations in Bali goes well.

Words are tricky

A mass murderer may very well talk in a polite, well mannered way, he may talk about the importance of human rights, he may tell everyody what would be morally right to do in any given situation. He may be nice looking, he may dress well, he may seem to be a perfectly ordinary man.

He may even become a member of a political party, do a lot of work there and become their leader, he may participate in debattes, he may be elected prime minister. When he is, he may still use exactly any words he chooses, including love, tolerance, rightousness. We can never know what he truly is, and no matter what words he uses, we may never know what he really means.

Just as you can never truly mean what I mean by these words.

The only protection any of us can ever hope to have against this, the only remedy we can really count on is our ability to make up our own minds. We can never know what anyone mean with their words, but we can listen to them and decide what we mean by them.

The only way any of us are going to keep that ability though is by constantly honing, tuining, practice it, and the only way we are going to be able to do that is if we live in a society that allows people to freely express their opinions.

This is why free speach and the open society is important, not because we need freedom of the press, not because it is democratic, not because we should be able to attack others religious belifs.

We have democracy because it is the best way we have thought of yet to garantee our freedom of speach, we have freedom of the press to help us train our ability to decide for ourselves, and we reserve the right to mock any religion or ethos since it is a biproduct of allowing the memebers of our society to think truly critical and free.

The girl in the woods

Since I'm not productive workwise for a while I started, finally, writing again!

I decieded to do it pulp-style, with no preconception, a minmum of planning. Michael Moorcock wrote some of the best stuff I've read, novels, in less than a week, so if he can I can. I amazed myself with my speed, so far I guess I have 45 or so odd pages (the aim is somewhere between 150 and 200), and they are not bad at all as far as I am concerned!

I am, of course, not the right person to decide this, so I try to portion it out to one friend and my wife, but as always it is hard to get people to read on demand. Anxiously I await their response, and somehow I seem to be unable to continue before I get their critique. What an odd thing that is...

The story is set in the imaginary world of Irea, or a seriously revised version thereof. This is a world I have been creating on and off since the mid 80s, and it has gone through a lot of different stages, some more juvenile than others, no doubt. This particular version revolves around a great empire on the verge of destruction. I am interested in the lack of insight the people living in such empires have when it comes to the state of their world.

The Romans, for instance, never thought that their empire would fall, the Byzantines thought of themselves largly as the rulers of the world, and oddly enough as Romans, for a long time. Todays historians write the death of the empire long before any of the people living in it, and people not living in it but jelously watching it from the outside ever thought it possible that it would fall.

I wonder what great empires there are today that are on the verge of destruction...

Mindburn

This night is killing me. My body is tired like never before from using it in new and unusual ways. The pain lingers even though it shouldn't. That makes my head hurt too, and i grow unfocused. My eyes hurt. My neck too from lying too long in the same fixed position. I don't trust my knee, so I have to keep lying here, which makes my neck even stiffer and probably doesen't do anything good for my headache either.

You would think I could sleep, but no, my mind is racing, not allowing me to use it for anyting constructive, I feel like someone with insomnia or on drugs. There is no sleep, no peace, just pain.

Endless

Days pass, weeks, months, years. Ever the same, never unique. Will I ever be someone that I can be proud of? I live, in some ways, but it doesen't make me feel. It is as if there was a filter between me and the world, a filter that washes away all the real of the impressions that are meant for my sences.

This is not new to me, it has always been like this. I remember for instance when I was very young, some kids picked on me (sometimes) or some one in my class. I'd always help them, or talk back if it was me, but I never felt anything doing those things.

I'm not a socaiopat, I do things because I feel them to be right, or know them to be right from remembering previous feeling, but most things don't move me in any serious way. I guess people would say that I am collected or cool. I guess they would be right.

Time though, it eats at me sometimes. It's not like it moves me, not at all. I'm not easily movable. It's more of a grinding, nagging kind of feeling, like a rash, like a cog-wheel not oiled, like a person following you just out of you field of view.

The problem I have with time is not that it constantly advances towards the inevitable death of me, although I am dead afraid of that. It is that it does so without making me feel it.

Serenity

Did you yet discover Firefly and Serenity? You should really check it out. Its a TV-show (Firefly), and also a movie (Serenity), created by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel). It has also spun podcasts (the Signal, Fireflytalk) as well as web radio theater (Old wounds) and a pen and paper RPG produced by Margret Weiss productions.

As you might gather I'm something of a fan. Why? Since this is Science Fiction with grease, dirt, no sound in space, western combined with space ships and most importantly with interesting characters.

Western in space you say? Yes, I say. I know that sounds truly out there, but it works! Firefly manages to create an atmosphere abou it that is a combination of the struggling of winning the west, a sub marine thriller, a road movie and a character drama, all packed in a stylish multicultural future with all the space stuff you probably know from Star Trek or Star Wars, only dirtier and more down to earth, no pun intended.

Well, enough with the sales pitch, ill round of with some links to further your wisdom.

The endless optimism of people

I often wonder what's wrong wih people. That's not new. This time I thought I'd narrow it down a bit though, to the mystery of why people tend to be so hoplessly optimistic. I don't mean that we should all just give up, not at all, I'm as good a fighter as anyone, but I do suggest that we try to stop pretending that everything will work out in the end. We all know it won't, our story always ends in death. And if it's not us, then it's someone else. We will know greif.

I know, I sound like a whining bastard about ready to end my own pain, but belive me when I say that thats the last thing I feel like doing, if for no other reason than the fact that that action in itself would be a big "I give up"-message. I don't give up, it's as simple as that.

I've actually come to realise something: There must be people who really belive that everything in the world is nice and dandy. They are the ones that would tend to give up if something changed their outlook on life; their whole reason for staying in the race is that they have a fundamental belif in the goodness of the world, thats their whole justification! So, take that away and there really isn't much left to fight for.

When cynics, pessimists, critics and other individuals with a "less than healthy" world view are concerned, their main reason for not giving up is that despite the facts of the world, despite the injustices, the horrors of war and of mankind, the diseases, the crap on tv and so on they just won't give up. The real courage is to keep going in spite of the grim outlook and the certain defeat that lies at the end of the battle.

What this section does

Welcome to the 'personal' section of The New Nature of the Catastrophe!

This section is intended to house my incoherent, infrequent, intolerable ramblings. That is, I write what I want, when I want and take no responsibility other than that I'm exercising of my right to free speach. That, by the way, might as well be the only promise I will ever make here: I'll try to piss people of as much as I can.

This will also, as far as such things are possible, be a diary of sorts, at least in the sence that most things I write here are in some way or another a reflection of things that happened to happen to me lateley. Please note, however, that not everything that you read there is true, I defenitly reserve the right to lie.

To round of this first post I would like to apologise in advance (and as far as this particular post goes also after the fact) for any misspellings, misuse of the english lanugage and other such derivates of the fact that english is not my native thounge. Please feel free to correct me, thats what I do when people try and fail at swedish!

Well met! I'm ending with a quote from my short comment on Koranen on Facebook (in swedish, sorry):